The disciplinary power of preservation denies care for the self, denying the cultivation of ethics, that outweighs the aff

[Michel, 1/20/84, “the ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: an interview with Michel Foucault”, Philosophy & Social Criticism, pp. 112-130]

Q: That means that you consider liberty as a reality already ethical in itself? MF: Liberty is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the deliberate form assumed by liberty. Q: Is ethics then the result of the search or care for self? MF: The care for self was in the greco-roman world the manner in which individual liberty-and civic liberty, up to a certain point-considered itself as ethical. If you take a whole series of texts going from the first Platonic dialogue up to the major texts of the later Stoics-Epictetus, Marcus-Aurelius, etc.- you would see that the theme of care for the self has truly permeated all ethical thought. On the other hand, it seems that in our societies, beginning at a certain moment in time- and it is difficult to say when that happened-the care for self became something somewhat suspect. Caring for self was, at a certain moment, gladly denounced as being a kind of self- love, a kind of egoism or individual interest in contradiction to the care one must show others or to the necessary sacrifice of the self. All that happened during the Christian era, but I would not say that it is exclusively due to Christianity. The situation is much more complex because, in Christianity, achieving salvation is also a caring for self. But in Christianity, salvation is obtained by renunciation of self. There is a paradox of care for self in Christianity, but that is another question. Returning to the question you were asking, I think that both with the Greeks and the Romans-and especially with the Greeks-in order to behave properly, in order to practice freedom properly, it was necessary to care for self, both in order to know one’s self-and there is the familiar gnothi seauton- and to improve one’s self, to surpass one’s self, to master the appetites that risk engulfing you. Individual liberty was very important to the Greeks- notwithstanding the platitude more or less derived from Hegel, according to which the liberty of the individual would have no importance when faced with the noble totality of the city-not to be a slave (of another city, of those who surround you, of those who govern you, of one’s own passions) was an absolutely fundamental theme: the concern for liberty was a basic and constant problem, during eight centuries of ancient culture. We have there an entire ethics which turned about the care for the self and which gave ancient ethics its very particular form. I am not saying that ethics is the care for self, but that in Antiquity, ethics, as a deliberate practice of liberty has turned about this basic imperative: Care for yourself. Q: An imperative that involves the assimilation of logoi, truths? MF: Naturally. One cannot care for self without knowledge. The care for self is of course knowledge of self-that is the Socratic-Platonic aspect- but it is also the knowledge of a certain number of rules of conduct or of principles which are at the same time truths and regulations. To care for self is to fit one’s self out with these truths. That is where ethics is linked to the game of truth. Q: You say that it is a question of making this truth which is learned, memorized, progressively put into action, a sort of quasi-subject which reigns supremely in you. What is the sta- tus of this quasi-subject? MF: In the Platonic current, at least according to the end of the Alcibiades, the problem for the subject or for the individual soul is to turn its gaze on itself in order to recognize itself in what it is and recognizing itself in what it is, to recall the truths to which it is related and on which it could have reflected. On the other hand, in the current that one can call globally Stoic, the problem is to learn by the teaching of a certain number of truths, of doctrines, some of which are fundamental principles and others rules of conduct. It is a question of having these principles tell you in each situation, and in some way spontaneously, how you should behave. It is here that we find a metaphor that does not come from the Stoics but from Plutarch. You must have learned principles so firmly that when your desires, your appetites or your fears awaken like barking dogs, the logos will speak with the voice of a master who silences the dogs by a single command. You have there the idea of a logos who would operate in some way without your doing anything. You will have become the logos or the logos will have become you. Q: We’d like to return to the question of the relationship be- tween freedom and ethics. When you say that ethics is the deliberate part of freedom, does that mean that freedom can be aware of itself as an ethical practice? Is it at the very first and always a moralizing freedom, so to speak, or must there be work on one’s self in order to discover this ethical dimension of liberty? MF: The Greeks, in fact, considered this freedom as a problem and the freedom of the individual as an ethical problem. But ethical in the sense that Greeks could understand. Ethos was the deportment and the way to behave. It was the subject’s mode of being and a certain manner of acting visible to others. One’s ethos was seen by his/her dress, by his/her bearing, by his/her gait, by the poise with which he reacts to events, etc. For them, that is the concrete expression of liberty. That is the way they problematized their freedom. The man/woman who has a good ethos, who can be admitted and held up as an example, he/she is a person who practices freedom in a certain manner. I do not think that a conversion is necessary so that freedom be reflected as an ethos that is good, beautiful, honorable, worthy and which can serve as an example, there is need of labor of self on self. Q: And that is where you situate the analysis of power? MF: I think that in the measure liberty signifies for the Greeks non- slavery-a definition which is quite different from ours- the problem is already entirely political. It is political in the measure that non-slavery with respect to others is a condition: a slave has no ethics. Liberty is then in itself political. And then, it has a political model, in the measure where being free means not being a slave to one’s self and to one’s appetites, which supposes that one establishes over one’s self a certain relation of domination, of mastery, which was called arche- power, authority. The care for self, you said, is in a certain fashion the care for others. The care for self is in this sense also always ethical. It is ethical in itself. MF: For the Greeks it is not because it is care for others that it is ethical. Care for self is ethical in itself, but it implies complex relations with others, in the measure where this ethos of freedom is also a way of caring for others. That is why it is important for a free man/woman, who behaves correctly, to know how to govern his/her husband/wife, his/her children and his/her home. There, too, is the art of governing. Ethos implies also a relation with others to the extent that care for self renders one competent to occupy a place in the city, in the community or in interindividual relationships which are proper-whether it be to exercise a magistracy or to have friendly relationships. And the care for self implies also a relationship to the other to the extent that, in order to really care for self, one must listen to the teachings of a master. One needs a guide, a counsellor, a friend- someone who will tell you the truth. Thus, the problem of relationship with others is present all along this development of care for self. Q: The care for self always aims at the good for others. It aims at a good administering of the area of power which is present in all relationships, i.e., it tends to administer it in the sense of non-domination. In this context, what can be the role of the philosopher, of the one who cares for the care of others? MF: Let us take for example Socrates. He is the one who hails people in the street or young boys in the gymnasium, by saying to them: Are you concerned with yourself? A god has charged him with that. That is his/her mission and he/she will not abandon it, even at the moment when he is threatened by death. He/She is truly the man/woman who cares for others. That is the particular position of the philosopher. But let us say it simply: in the case of the free man/woman, I think that the assumption of all this morality was that the one who cared for himself/herself correctly found him/herself, by that very fact, in a measure to behave correctly in relationship to others and for others. A city in which everyone would be correctly concerned for self would be a city that would be doing well, and it would find therein the ethical principle of its stability. But I don’t think that one can say that the Greek who cares for himself/herself should first of all care for others. This theme will not come into play, it seems to me, until later. One must not have the care for others precede the care for self. The care for self takes moral precedence in the measure that the relationship to self takes ontological precedence. Q: Can the care for self, which possesses a positive ethical 118 sense, be understood as a sort of conversion of power? MF: A conversion, yes. It is in fact a way of controlling and limiting. For, if it is true that slavery is the big risk to which Greek liberty is opposed, there is also another danger, which appears at first glance as the opposite of slavery: the abuse of power. In the abuse of power, one goes beyond what is legitimately the exercise of power and one imposes on others one’s whims, one’s appetites, one’s desires. There we see the image of the tyrant or simply of the powerful and wealthy man/woman who takes advantage of his/her power and his/her wealth to misuse others, to impose on them undue power. But one sees-at least that is what the Greek philosophers say-that this man/woman is in reality a slave to his/her appetites. And the good ruler is precisely the one who exercises his/her power correctly, i.e., by exercising at the same time his/her power on himself. And it is the power over self which will regulate the power over others. Q: Does not the care for self, released from the care for others, run the risk of absolutizing itself? Could not this absolutization of care for self become a kind of exercise of power on others, in the sense of domination of the other? MF: No, because the risk of dominating others and exercising over them a tyrannical power only comes from the fact that one did not care for one’s self and that one has become a slave to his/her desires. But if you care for yourself correctly, i.e., if you know ontologically what you are, if you also know of what you are capable, if you know what it means for you to be a citizen in a city, to be the head of a household in an oikos, if you know what things you must fear and those that you should not fear, if you know what is suitable to hope for and what are the things on the contrary which should be completely indifferent for you, if you know, finally that you should not fear death, well, then, you cannot abuse your power over others. There is therefore no danger. This idea will appear much later, when love of self will become suspect and will be seen as one of the possible roots of diverse moral faults. In this new con- text, the care for self will have as its primary form, the renunciation of the self. You discover this in a fairly clear fashion in the Treatise on Virginity of Gregory of Nyssa, where you find the notion of care for self epimeleia heauton defined essentially as renunciation of all worldly attachments. It is the renunciation of all that could be love of self, attachment to a worldly self. But I believe that in Greek and Roman thought the care for self cannot in itself tend to this exaggerated love of self which would, in time, come to neglect others or worse still, abuse the power that one can have over them. Q: Then it is a care for self which, thinking of itself, thinks of others? MF: Yes, absolutely. The one who cares for self, to the point of knowing exactly what are his/her duties as head of a household, as husband/wife or father/mother, will find that he/she has relationships with his/her husband/wife and children which are as they should be. Q: But does not the human condition, in the sense of its finiteness, play there a very important role? You have spoken of death. If you are not afraid of death, you cannot abuse your power over others. It seems to us this problem of finiteness is very important: fear of death, fear of finiteness, of being hurt: all these are at the heart of care for self.., MF: Of course. And that is where Christianity, in introducing salvation as salvation beyond this life, will somehow unbalance or at least upset the whole theme of care for self. Although- and I recall it once more-seeking one’s salvation will be precisely renunciation. With the Greeks and the Romans, on the other hand, beginning from the fact that one cares for self in his/her own life and that the reputation which we will have left behind is the only after-death with which we preoccupy our- selves-care for self can then be entirely centered on one’s self, on what one does, on the place one occupies among others. It can be totally centered on the acceptance of death- which will be most evident in later Stoicism-even up to a certain point almost become a desire for death. It can be, at the same time, if not care for others, at least a care for one’s self which will be beneficial to others. It is interesting to note in Seneca, for example, the importance of the theme: let us hasten to grow old, let us hasten to the appointed time which will permit us to rejoin our selves. This sort of moment before death, where nothing more can happen, is different from the desire for death that we find among Christians, who expect salvation from death. It is like a movement to articulate one’s existence to the point where there would be nothing else before it but the possibility of death.